Constantinople

by Roger Crowley Book 2 in the Mediterranean Trilogy series.

First published 2005

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4.3(7,993)

In the spring of 1453 Sultan Mehmed II brought the resources of the expanding Ottoman state against Constantinople, the diminished but still formidable capital of the Byzantine Empire. Constantine XI Palaiologos organised a defence built around the Theodosian walls, a small Byzantine force and foreign volunteers led by the Genoese commander Giovanni Giustiniani. Crowley follows the preparations on both sides, including Mehmed’s fortress on the Bosphorus, heavy artillery, naval operations and the struggle to break or bypass the city’s defences.

After weeks of bombardment, failed assaults and fighting around the Golden Horn, the Ottomans launched the final attack on 29 May 1453. Giustiniani was mortally wounded, Constantine died in the fighting and the city passed into Ottoman hands. Crowley draws together Byzantine, Ottoman, Genoese and other western accounts to explain the siege as both a closely fought military contest and a turning point in the political history of the eastern Mediterranean.